Lamy hopeful of bringing US onside over access to life-saving medicines

TRADE Commissioner Pascal Lamy has confirmed that the US might be granted special concessions to ensure it signs up to a deal aimed at providing cheaper drugs for victims of killer diseases such as AIDS.

The Frenchman is optimistic that an agreement on access to medicines can be thrashed out before September’s World Trade Organization ministerial conference in Cancún, Mexico.

Until now, poor countries unable to manufacture their own drugs have been thwarted from importing cheaper generic versions. That is because the WTO’s trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPS) agreement states that compulsory purchases must be ‘predominantly’ for the market where the drugs are produced.

But Lamy acknowledged that the price of obtaining a deal before Cancún might be having to give ground to Washington on other issues, which he declined to specify.

Addressing anti-poverty groups at a Brussels conference on 8 May, he said: “Is there a risk that the US would only join in if it gets another condition? Yes, there is a risk that the US will ask for a bit more, and for the sake of keeping a compromise they would be given it.”

Ministers attending the 2001 WTO conference in Doha resolved to break the impasse on access to medicines by the end of last year, but the deadline was not met. Talks broke down in December after the US stuck to its demand that a draft accord should be restricted to medicines for epidemics such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, excluding treatments for a range of tropical diseases from its scope.

Lamy concurred with arguments that the Bush administration has been heavily influenced by powerful drug multinationals: “The US [government view] and the US pharmaceutical industry happens to be the same.” However, he argued that a deal would be in the long-term interest of the major companies. “If I was in the boots of the pharmaceutical industry, I would say that a long-term blockage on this issue could result in the erosion of what I care for, which is TRIPS.”

Lamy also said that the failure to keep the deadline agreed at Doha had influenced the “whole ambience” of the trade round launched in the Qatari capital. “The impact of no agreement by Cancún would be very severe for the whole positioning of the negotiations,” he added.

A US government official refuted Lamy’s warning that Washington could be granted a concession. “There’s certainly a desire on the part of the US to have the issue resolved before the [Cancún] ministerial,” the official remarked. “In terms of there being a trade-off element in the way we deal with the other elements of the agenda, I don’t think we see it in that light.”

Jo Leadbeater, head of EU advocacy with relief agency Oxfam, said she feared Washington may resort to a “cynical use of the negotiations”.